Dawn Staley asked about transgender athletes in women’s sports. Her response went viral

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley received a question Saturday about whether she believes transgender women should be able to participate in women’s sports.

“If you’re a woman, you should play,” Staley said during her pre-national championship game news conference, a day before No. 1 USC plays No. 1 Iowa in the title game. “If you consider yourself a woman, and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. That’s my opinion.”

After Staley finished the first part of her answer, she asked the reporter if he wanted her to “go deeper.” He responded by explicitly asking: “Do you think transgender women should be able to participate?”

Staley continued: “That’s the question you want to ask, I’ll give you that. Yes. Yes (transgender women should be able to participate in women’s sports). So now the barnstormer people are going to flood my (social media) timeline and be a distraction to me on one of the biggest days of our game, and I’m OK with that. I really am.”

Her response went viral on social media.

“What an incredible moment to have the top coach of the top team on the biggest stage face the question head on and stand up for trans women,” wrote Power Play’s Lindsay Gibbs on X (formerly Twitter). “Dawn Staley is remarkable.”

“Dawn Staley is a goddamn national treasure,” Nancy Armour of USA Today wrote. “She’s asked by the usual suspect about transgender athletes. Says transgender women should be allowed to play. Then skewers the guy by saying she knows this’ll now create a firestorm ahead of biggest game, ‘and I’m OK with that.’ ”

“You can tell how much (Outkick) cares about women’s sports when they show up and ask questions about the national anthem and trans women at the women’s final,” Brian Floyd, formerly of SB Nation, wrote. “Dawn Staley is a real one forever.”

Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder was asked the same question by a different reporter in her press conference Saturday but declined to answer.

Transgender is an adjective used to describe individuals whose gender identity doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. In the last several years, over a dozen states have passed legislation banning transgender girls from participating in sports with other girls with the explanation that girls who are born female are at an inherent physical disadvantage to those assigned male at birth.

According to 2016 research published in the scholarly journal Sports Medicine, though, there is currently “no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition ... and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.”

Women’s basketball has been a space for transgender athletes, with multiple non-binary players (meaning they do not identify as man or woman) currently on WNBA rosters, including Layshia Clarendon of the Los Angeles Sparks and AD Durr of the Atlanta Dream.

Saturday’s question came from a reporter at OutKick.com, the same outlet that asked Staley about canceling a home-and-home series with Brigham Young (following an alleged racial incident at a BYU-Duke volleyball game) after USC’s win at LSU this January in Baton Rouge. Staley declined to answer the question and grasped at the air, intimating the reporter “grasping” for something regarding an event that occurred over a year and a half prior.

South Carolina (37-0) and Iowa (34-4) meet in the national title game at 3 p.m. Sunday (ABC) at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. ESPN’s Ruan Ruocco, Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe will broadcast.